


Ashes

by ailes_de_cire



Series: Flying into the Sun [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Death Eaters, Desperate Harry, Fighting back the muggle way, Guns, Minor Character Death, Second War with Voldemort, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:01:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailes_de_cire/pseuds/ailes_de_cire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashes: noun<br/>a.	deathlike grayness; extreme pallor suggestive of death.<br/>b.	ruins, especially the residue of something destroyed; remains;vestiges:<br/>the ashes of their love; the ashes of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

**Ashes**

**_noun_ **

  1. deathlike grayness; extreme pallor suggestive of death.
  2. ruins, especially the residue of something destroyed; remains;vestiges:  _the ashes of their love; the ashes of the past._



 

The creases in his forehead prevent him from sleeping. Well, perhaps not the actual furrow itself – it is more the cause of the creases; stress. It creeps in insidious waves to smother his every waking moment, consuming him.

He is sprawled on his stomach, low to the ground and not daring to move even the slightest bit, staring out into the darkness. If his eyes linger in one place for too long, enemies appear, conjured up by an overly suspicious, sleep-deprived mind from shapes in the trees and other various nature features.

Hermione and Ron’s eyes follow his every movement now, they are unable to let his presence slip by. They watch him warily, as prey to his supposed predator. They saw what happened at the wedding. Harry himself can’t unsee it. Every time his eyelids slide closed he can see her form crumpling, the light and soul abruptly ejected from her eyes.

He is not sorry, nor does he regret.

Every moment she spent alive, she stood on the rotting remains of her victims – a pile that was only growing every moment she drew breath, with every curse that spewed from her wand.

She was more deserving of death than Professor Quirrell, and was even granted a more humane death for all that she had done.

The other Death Eaters deserved the same, for the innocent bodies that currently line the streets of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, for the muggleborn witches and wizards that are being consigned to Azkaban under the ludicrous charge of ‘stealing magic.’

Ron and Hermione edge away from him, to the sides of his movements, and haven’t showed him their backs in months.

He thumbs the grainy, comforting wood that is his wand, staring a little harder at the helmeted soldiers that appear to be climbing up from a piece of dead ground about fifty metres away.

Obviously not death eaters, not wizards, not even real; they vanish back into the distance to return to the trees they were.

His only regret was, perhaps, to sully his own soul with one of the Unforgivables for a worm such as her.

He thoughtfully taps his wand.

 

* * *

 

“Is this a wise idea, Harry?” Hermione asks, biting her lip, eyes darting nervously to and from the object in his hand.

Harry pulls his lips into a grim line. Or, they were already in a grim line and this expression seems to suit the situation so he has no reason to attempt to change it. He stares at her from behind his glasses, one lens precariously held into the frame solely through application of tape.

To use magic brazenly while on the run from the people that control _every single magical tracker_ _in Britain_ would be suicide.

Ron, as he’d taken to being for the last few weeks, is silent. His eyes are dark, and he is obviously not coping well at all to being immersed in the muggle world, unable to so much as reach for his wand. Hermione had taken possession of it after the second time he unthinkingly cast a spell and drew the Snatchers to their position.

He now stuck to Hermione like glue, paranoid that he would be without in the event that they were found by their enemy, which now could be counted in the thousands rather than the small (although zealous) terrorist group it had started out as. The ministry hadn’t made a squeak of protest in the face of the blackmailing, bribing and terrorising campaign that the Death Eaters had established, barely holding up for a few weeks.

“If we can’t sneak around them using magic, Hermione, we’ll have to do it the smart way.” Unfamiliar fingers hesitantly gripped the weapon that he was offering her.

Hermione stared long and hard at him, straight in the eyes. “I don’t think this is smart, Harry.”

He grimaced wryly at her, studying the gun in his hand, glancing back at the vacantly staring muggle that was their ignorant soon-to-be weapons trainer. It had taken a solid week for Hermione to set up a magical cloaking field around this warehouse, with his and Ron’s far from skilled assistance.

“Yeah.” He admitted, wincing a little as Ron stared straight down the barrel, having less than half an idea of the kind of destruction a gun could cause. “I don’t really think it is, either.”

Hermione grabbed the barrel of Ron’s gun, white-faced, and yanked it towards the floor. “Then _why are we doing this_?” She hissed, hesitance tipping into malice at his less than confident reply.

Harry just stared at her. He didn’t need to repeat the body count that ran every morning in the Prophet, the pictures of executions and the statistics for the rates of muggleborns sentenced to Azkaban for imagined crimes.

It had been only four months since the death eaters, since Tom, seized England, and hundreds were dead. The count was almost in the thousands, from a population that could not afford the loss.

She grimaced, but did not argue further, turning back to the silent weapons dealer – highly illegal, definitely, but the criminal also knew what he was doing and that was all that mattered. Also, learning from someone legally was not an option – legality meant records, which meant producing identification and guardians; meant being traceable by the muggles and their government. It also meant that the shop would have been too public for them to be able to surreptitiously set up Hermione’s magic obscuring wards.

She banished the illusion from the man, and at the same time Harry cast a confundus charm, making him believe they were paying clients in need of a perfectly normal lesson on how to shoot properly, and not shoot themselves accidentally.

The man shook himself, and abruptly yanked Ron’s hand down again, aiming the barrel at his feet with a vicious curse. “-Fuckin hell, they’re makin’ ‘em youngr ev’y year! First fuckin lesson is the point the bloody things at your own feet, so you’ll shoot yourself if you fuck up!”

Harry watched Ron exchange a wary look with Hermione, both of them cringing away from the man and fumbling their guns before settling in to focus on their tricked tutor.

He had no intention of getting them killed for sticking with him just because they couldn’t use the only weapons left to them. He’d sooner die than let them suffer the same fate of Sirius, of Cedric, of all the innocent witches and wizards that couldn’t escape Britain.

He’d make sure that they could defend themselves before he left to go and hunt down the Horcruxes.

Magic would get them killed, would attract squads and squads of death eaters or aurors serving death eaters. Pureblood wizards, however, would not be able to save themselves from a bit of muggle ingenuity.

**Author's Note:**

> Things are grim. Next chapter will start in on the crossover part. I am obviously not going by the same rules JK Rowling went by when the Golden Trio were hiding out in the last book; I never quite understood how their magic couldn't be traced, especially if they used it in desolate places where there was no one else to hide their magic use, but I guess that's just me.


End file.
